We live in a world where people with experience are told they are not experts by experts with no experience.

We should not dismiss observation and education; they both serve a purpose when aware of their limitations. Observation, however, is no substitute for firsthand experience.

I’m no expert. I just have some experience, and that’s what I write about.

Have you ever felt compelled to do something? Maybe driven is a better word to describe the relentless push to bring an idea to life. I don’t know for sure. Semantics like this are what you would find macerating inside my head if you could see such things, but I digress.

In March of this year, 2026, I went home for the first time in 17 years. It was a surreal experience, and it felt like I was saying goodbye, even if I didn’t know to whom or what. I saw some cherished friends and family, visited some places that broke my heart to see, and spent most of the three days in silence. When I left, I felt compelled to write. I had to write the story about Stacy and me, the unspoken story, the one I had been holding on to silently for 22 years.

While I have talked about it briefly with a few people, I mainly just kept my head down and wrote. Then I went to work trying to figure out how to get it published. I needed to do this. Nothing else in my life has ever been so clear.

I needed to say goodbye.

Grief had become my identity long after the initial wounds had healed. I grieved for Stacy, but I also grieved for “what might have been,” an imaginary place I would return to, unknowingly, unwillingly, time and time again when life would become hard.

And life is frequently hard.

I felt compelled to share this with all of you, to share this with the world at large, really. Not so that you would look at me differently. Truth be told, I’d rather you not look at me at all most of the time. But here I stand, holding up the ugliest parts of me for everyone to see.

So why?

I’m trying to be a better dad, a better husband, a better friend, a better person. This process has helped me see myself from an unflattering angle, but an angle that needed to be exposed. And you know what? It hasn’t killed me.

If anything, it has set me free.

So many people over the years have told me to “let it go.” Bless their hearts. In the most southern tones I can muster. That’s just not possible. The only way through a thing is to go through it. So the point in sharing this is so that you know that you can walk through whatever you need to as well.

Sometimes we need an example, and sometimes we need to be that example for others.

It has turned out that maybe I have more to say than that. It seems as if my candor, my “voice” has resonated with a few people, and that’s humbling and terrifying because I’m no expert. I do not know how to help, but everywhere I look I see a sea of need.

But what about the sea of people who are drowning? I don’t know how to answer that question. My experience tells me, however, that I need to be an example. And I can do that because I’ve fallen further than I thought possible and found my voice on the other side of that fall.

Over the past few weeks, I have been writing a series of excerpts from the book, expansions on ideas that I did not fully explore to keep the book’s cadence. I’ve done this partly because I wanted to, and partly to build momentum ahead of the wider release that happens at the end of this month.

My hope is that it reaches more people. Even if I do not fully understand it, there seems to be a need for it in the world.

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